e before
my eyes, and then suddenly the very blackness of darkness would appall
me by its dense gloom. All at once, while gazing at a frightful
creation of my distempered mind, I seemed struck with sudden blindness.
I knew a candle was burning in the room but I could not see it, all was
so pitchy dark. I lost the sense of feeling, too, for I endeavored to
grasp my arm in one hand, but consciousness was gone. I put my hand to
my side, my head, but felt nothing, and still I knew my limbs and frame
were there. And then the scene would change! I was falling--falling
swiftly as an arrow--far down into some terrible abyss; and so like
reality was it that as I fell I could see the rocky sides of the
horrible shaft, where mocking, jibing, fiend-like forms were perched;
and I could feel the air rushing past me, making my hair stream out by
the force of the unwholesome blast. Then the paroxysm sometimes ceased
for a few moments, and I would sink back on my pallet, drenched with
perspiration, utterly exhausted, and feeling a dreadful certainty of
the renewal of my torments.

By the mercy of God I survived this awful seizure; and when I rose, a
weak, broken-down man, and surveyed my ghastly features in a glass, I
thought of my mother, and asked myself how I had obeyed the
instructions I had received from her lips, and to what advantage I had
turned the lessons she had taught me. I remembered her prayers and
tears, thought of what I had been but a few short months before, and
contrasted my situation with what it then was. Oh! how keen were my
own rebukes; and in the excitement of the moment I resolved to lead a
better life, and abstain from the accursed cup.

For about a month, terrified by what I had suffered, I adhered to my
resolution, then my wife came home, and in my joy at her return I flung
my good resolutions to the wind, and foolishly fancying that I could
now restrain my appetite, which had for a whole month remained in
subjection, I took a glass of brandy. That glass aroused the
slumbering demon, who would not be satisfied by so tiny a libation.
Another and another succeeded, until I was again far advanced in the
career of intemperance. The night of my wife's return I went to bed
intoxicated.

I will not detain the reader by the particulars of my everyday life at
this time; they may easily be imagined from what has already been
stated. My previous bitter experience, one would think, might have
operated as a